I don’t even realize I’m moving until I’m in front of him.
“Man,” I breathe, staring him down, chest splitting. “Did they come after you?”
Will gives me that sideways grin that’s more pain than charm.
“No,” he says. “I went to them.”
“What?”
“I might look like shit, but I won.” He says with a crooked smirk.
My brain stalls. “You what?”
Will limps over to the kitchen, drags a stool out from under the counter with his foot, and drops onto it, wincing like hell but still smug underneath it all.
“Ned let me stand in for you,” he says, glancing at JT. “He agreed. I knew if I told you, you’d never let me. So, we didn’t. We went. Took care of it.”
“You—” I run my hand down my face, heart thudding. “Jesus, Will.”
“I did good,” he says. “Real good. They sent a fucking tank in human skin. He opened wild—tried to break my ribs in the first round. But he was slow. Too heavy. I kept it tight, kept him moving. Let him believe the fight left me. When he charged, I took his knee out from under him and went for the jaw. Spit blood for two rounds but didn’t go down. Got him flat by the fourth. Broke his orbital. Won it.” He smiles again, grim satisfaction in it. “Didn’t bring in what you would’ve, but Stauder accepted it. On the condition of one clean-up job. Of his choosing.”
I stare at him. “Will—”
“Our debt is clear,” he says.
“It’s not our debt. And once he sees what you can do, you won’t be free of him,” I warn.
Will shakes his head slowly. “Of course it isourdebt, Hex.”
I look between him and JT, my chest cracking wide open. “I left you. I left you both. And you did this alone—”
“We’re never alone,” JT says quietly. “You taught us that.”
“You think we’d let you carry all of it?” Will leans forward, voice softer now, but firm. “You think we haven’t learned anything from you? All that training, all that discipline. We’ve watched you for years. You don’t get to act like we’re just yourshadows. Sable needed you, man. And you needed us. So we showed up. We handled it.”
“You don’t know what could’ve happened,” I snap, voice cracking at the edges. “You think I don’t want you to fight because I don’t think you’re good enough? I don’t let you go in there because I’m fucking terrified of losing you.”
Silence stretches thick between us.
Will nods. “And Sable? She did what she did because you showed her how, didn’t she? You gave her that strength. That knowledge. She saved her son. You made that possible.”
His voice goes quiet. “Let us do the same for you.”
I fold.
I rub a hand over my jaw, eyes burning. “You’re both still fucking idiots.”
Will grins, lopsided and bloody. “Butlivingidiots.”
I shake my head. “Yeah. And I’m gonna be paying for that clean-up job for the rest of my life.”
“Damn right you are,” JT mutters.
We all laugh. It’s shaky, bitter, but real.
And when the laughter fades, and everything settles again into that heavy kind of silence—the one you only earn after a fight—I glance toward the door. Toward the road that leads back to her. Back to Sable.
Something shifts inside me, a magnetic pull locking into place and swinging home.
